UN Investigation Resignations Volcker Committee

[Annie]

Not because of time, but cover-up:


http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2005/04/update_oilforre.php

April 23, 2005: UPDATE: Oil-for-Resignations

Key UN Oil-for-Food investigator Robert Parton, whose resignation several days ago was first reported on this blog, is going public with his accusations toward the Volcker Committee in two news reports this evening, one from the AP and one from the Telegraph.

Says the AP's Desmond Butler:

The investigator, Robert Parton, confirmed a report by The Associated Press earlier this week that he had resigned along with another investigator to protest recent findings by the committee that cleared U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan of meddling in the $64 billion program.

Parton's statement comes after a member of the committee discounted reports that the two investigators had left the Independent Inquiry Committee because they believed the report was too soft on the secretary-general.

"Contrary to recent published reports, I resigned my position as Senior Investigative Counsel for the IIC not because my work was complete but on principle," Parton said.

From the Telegraph:

Last night, in the most explicit criticism so far directed at the report, Robert Parton, one of the senior investigators, told a lawyer involved with the Volcker inquiry that he thought the committee was "engaging in a de facto cover-up, acting with good intentions but steered by ideology".

The lawyer, Adrian Gonzalez, told The Sunday Telegraph that he believed the committee, headed by Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was determined to protect the secretary-general.

According to Mr Gonzalez, Mr Parton felt that the committee had effectively divided the body of evidence relating to the oil-for-food scandal into testimony that it did want to hear, and testimony that it did not.

Much of what the Telegraph has to say is already familiar to readers of this blog, but now Parton has gone public. Undoubtedly, there will be more to come as other members of the committee have their say -- some of which may conflict with Parton and some not.

Meanwhile, Adrian Gonzalez has informed me that he was misquoted to some degree by the Telegraph. Gonzalez, the attorney for former Kojo Annan business partner Pierre Mousselli, says he has not spoken directly with Parton in some days and that Telegraph has exaggerated their report to some degree. Parton, Gonzalez believes, would not be so explicit in his criticisms. The reference to the "de facto coverup" were Gonzalez's words, not Parton's, although they may reflect the resigned investigator's feelings. In fact, in the end they don't seem so it odds with what what the investigator already told the Associated Press. He resigned "on principle."

However you parse this, the Volcker Committee is a now an unmitigated disaster. Just as it is ludicrous to think that Kofi Annan is the one to reform the United Nations, it is ludicrous to think this committee the means to investigate the scandal.

UPDATE: Another source inside the investigation has emailed me to say, among other things, that there is little coordination between the investigative teams (Parton, Duncan and Cornacchia were but one of several units not communicating with each other) and that there is "no coherent management plan."

Evidently.

 

[Annie]

Not because of time, but cover-up:


http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2005/04/update_oilforre.php

Interesting follow up on this, links at site:

http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2005/06/oilforfood_the_2.php

une 15, 2005: Oil-for-Food - The Parton Connection

The resignation of lead UN investigator Robert Parton from the Volcker Committee investigating OFF first revealed on this blog is now easier to understand. According to an article from ISN Security Watch, it was Parton who discovered the two emails that possibly implicate Kofi Annan in the Oil-for-Food scandal and which, for some reason, were omitted from the Committee's report.

Two emails dating from 1998 suggest that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan may have known about a multimillion-dollar UN contract awarded to the Swiss company that employed his son Kojo, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, Annan had initially failed to tell investigators who scrutinized the Oil-for-Food program that he had taken part in meetings with members of the Swiss firm that employed his son, shortly before the company began soliciting UN business.

Electronic memos recovered from computers by the UN's chief investigator at the time, Robert Parton, revealed Annan's contacts with the company.

Given the Volcker Committee declined to put these memos in their report is it any wonder that Parton felt constrained to resign? The article continues:

One of the emails, which AP and The New York Times claim to have obtained, describes an alleged encounter between Annan and officials from Cotecna Inspection S.A. in late 1998, during which the Swiss company's bid for the contract was raised.

The second, from the same Cotecna executive, expresses confidence that the company would win the bid because of "effective but quiet lobbying" in New York diplomatic circles.

Annan had been exonerated by an interim report on the case released in March by the Independent Inquiry Committee, chaired by former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.

The discovery of the email memos could cast doubt on the UN-backed committee's finding that there was not enough evidence to show that Annan had known of efforts by Cotecna to win the Iraq Oil-for-Food contract.

Through his spokesman, Annan said he did not recall the late 1998 meeting with the Swiss company. He has repeatedly insisted that he was unaware that Cotecna was pursuing a contract with the Oil-for-Food program.

Does Paul Volcker have a comment? Or will he leave his reputation to history?

UPDATE: More on the second email.

 

[Annie]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,160354,00.html

U.N. Procurement Official Resigns Job

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. procurement official who has been at the center of a FOX News investigation into a possible conflict of interest involving his son has quit his job, officials at the United Nations confirmed Wednesday.

Alexander Yakovlev (search), a Russian who was a longtime U.N. employee, submitted his resignation Tuesday and U.N. officials accepted it Wednesday. The resignation was immediate.

But Yakovlev's decision to leave on his own terms will not stop the U.N. investigation into his activities, according to a statement from a spokesman for Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

And, the Independent Inquiry Committee — the panel investigating the Oil-for-Food (search) program — asked for and received U.N. permission to seal Yakovlev's office to access materials that might fit with its broader probe into corruption at the organization.

Testimony by Yakovlev was important in two interim reports by the IIC, which is headed by Paul Volcker, about the scandal-scarred Oil-for-Food program.

On Monday, the United Nations announced it was going to look into whether Yakovlev violated conflict-of-interest rules. But the U.N. decision did more than draw attention to the man's possible wrongdoing — it also raised questions about how the world body investigates itself.

The decision to investigate Yakovlev was prompted by a FOX News investigation into the staffer. Yakovlev, who handles tens of millions of dollars' worth of contracts for a variety of U.N. operations, is entwined in an apparent father-son conflict of interest similar to the one that engulfed Secretary-General Kofi Annan (search) and his son Kojo.

Yakovlev's son, Dmitry, worked for a company called IHC Services, Ltd. (search), and the firm represents companies trying to secure U.N. contracts.

IHC's Chief Executive Officer Ezio Testa told FOX News that he gave Dmitry Yakovlev a job because his father asked him to, a move that came only months after the older Yakovlev worked on a $1.2 million procurement contract with the company.

After the FOX News report, which was published Monday, the United Nations said its Office of Internal Oversight Services is probing Yakovlev. But U.N. officials revealed little else about the investigation, except that it is confined to the conflict-of-interest allegation. According to a U.N. spokesman, Yakovlev will continue to work during the investigation.

The most recent head of the Office of Internal Oversight Services, Dileep Nair (search), is under investigation himself for charges of sexually harassing staff; his replacement is not scheduled to take over until mid-July.

FOX News' own investigation raised questions that went beyond the father-son relationship with IHC, including the discovery that Alexander Yakovlev's wife, Olga, was issued a Visa credit card from a bank in the Caribbean country of Antigua and Barbuda, which has strict bank secrecy laws.

The card was in the name of a company called Moxyco Ltd., and was supplied to Olga Yakovlev by Maritime International, a firm that helps individuals create offshore corporations and bank accounts. When FOX News tried to obtain an explanation from her about this financial arrangement, Olga Yakovlev said to talk to her husband, who will not agree to an interview unless Annan permits him to. That permission has not yet been granted.